My brother hit a nice buck opening day of Shotgun season in NY at 60 yards in shoulder, he found bullet fragments on the ground some hair and hide but very little blood trail, he never recoved of found the deer. The powerbelts are KNOWN for "blowing up" on bone and tough hits. Same thing happen to me 3 seasons ago on a huge buckand I did a lot of penetration testing shooting into a 5 lb bucket of packed potting soil, what I found was Nosler Partitions were the best on accuracy and penetration for my muzzie hunting.

I think you have to plan on bad hits once in a while, because we are all human and we don't always hold and get a good shot, any bullet will do the job behind the front shoulder in the ribs. It takes a real bullet to hit in the sholder and go into the chest cavity and get the deer. However Nosler Partition HG 300g are over $40 for 50 now, so I am switching based on feedback in this forum to either Speer Gold Dots or Speer 300g Sp Uni-core pistol bullets, which are onlyh about $15. I shoot Harvester Crushed rib sabots.

My brother switched after the bad hit to Harvester Sabretooth, which is a bullet similar to a PB, but all lead. See this article about PBs:

http://www.hpmuzzleloading.com/feedback.html

I think there are a lot >>better<< (penetration, weight retentionandexpansion)bullets at a much cheaper price, just poking a hole in them is NOT what you want to do, you want penetration, expansion to 2x the size and weight nearly 100%, so you get a big exit hole, or massive internal shock.

Chap Gleason

Chap